The Web.
Martha was having an amazing time with the Doctor while the two women were enjoying a night in an expensive restaurant in London. While she was glad to be home and had the chance to be with her family, she wanted to spend a lot of her time with the Doctor. To say it was a rollercoaster was an understatement; for the last six months, the Time Lady had pulled some strings and she had gotten the young medical student placed in UNIT so then she could gain greater expertise in different fields of medicine and hard experience in the field. Martha had been upset at first, considering how the Doctor had taken her out of her comfort zone, but she had quickly recovered when her sharp mind had caught up with the benefits behind the Doctor's little surprise.
With UNIT she was able to expand her knowledge and experience given how many scrapes the organisation got into, and thanks to the work Martha had gotten the benefit of working with doctors who were far better and infinitely better than the consultants like Mr Stoker. While the consultant had been brilliant and a dedicated physician, his position where he was afforded greater rewards had made him arrogant and dismissive of other people's feelings and ailments in Martha's mind; more than once Martha had been terrified there was the chance she would become like him, and she would begin cracking inappropriate jokes.
However, her experience with UNIT was different. The doctors and nurses who worked in UNIT were experts in their fields, but their experiences with aliens had broadened their horizons, and thanks to their experiences helping aliens who didn't want to blast the planet to oblivion, and make the human race slaves or their dinner (she couldn't believe those sci-fi tropes existed in real life), Martha had gained a lot of perspective on alien life.
She knew that was what the Doctor wanted and more than once Martha had wondered what had made the Doctor have UNIT seek her out for this training placement which had already given her a great deal already. UNIT was regularly called out to deal with the odd and the unknown and it had grown into a truly international organisation over the decades since the seventies, and her knowledge of what the Doctor and the legendary UNIT team of Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart had skyrocketed. While the new UNIT was more trigger happy at times, the Doctor did not let them get away with too much, and the Time Lady had a legendary status within the organisation. Not only were she and the Doctor visiting parts of the UK, and even other parts of the world, which granted her a greater chance of showing off and refining her medical training while at the same time the Doctor taught her a great deal.
Martha sometimes wondered if the Doctor was a teacher back on her world, but she couldn't be sure; the Doctor became extremely tight-lipped about her time on Gallifrey (even getting the name of her homeworld had been a fight and a half, but considering how the Doctor had been exiled to Earth, she could understand it), and so she had learnt to just avoid talking about the topic.
The last place the Doctor and Martha had been to had been in San Diego where a group of Sea Devils, foolishly woken up thanks to an experiment by the American navy, had tried to unleash a horde of what the Doctor called 'Myrkas,' genetically engineered and cybernetically enhanced sea dragons which delivered terrible electrical blasts although some of them were as large as double-decker buses. Hundreds had been killed during the incident, and UNIT had needed to work with the trigger-happy US navy who didn't understand the danger they were getting themselves into even when the Sea Devils proved they had the power to melt the hulls of their ships, and Martha had worked with dozens of doctors to clean up the mess while the Doctor needed to clean up an even bigger mess.
The Doctor had tried to broker a peace with the Sea Devils, but she had failed. Martha would never forget the way the US navy, egged on by their government, had sabotaged the efforts and depth-charged the area around San Diego; the young medical student had no idea how many Sea Devils had died in the attack, but they'd been furious enough to launch a full-scale retaliation against the Western Seaboard of America, where hundreds of people were killed or left injured in the aftermath of the attack. Even worse the authorities and the navy had not wanted UNIT's help, never mind their advice. Unfortunately for them, they got it whether they liked it or not. The Doctor herself had ignored the so-called orders of the American authorities, and Martha had followed her lead since she'd found them unreasonable and stupid.
Martha was just glad she was out of the whole mess, and she was also relieved UNIT had managed to stop the entire disaster which could have spelt doom for the human race (and she wasn't being melodramatic since she had heard some of the Sea Devils decry human prisoners), but she wasn't sure about their decision to use retcon, a drug which wiped memories while they used some kind of alien device to rewind the damage over the city. UNIT had sprayed retcon gas all over San Diego so anyone who had seen the Myrka or the Sea Devils would not remember the attack. UNIT had even cast a blanket over the local internet to prevent anyone from posting the scenes online. She could understand the precautions, of course; if the entire world had seen what was going on, there would have been massive calls to have the Sea Devils and their land cousins destroyed, something the Doctor truly did not like, but while Martha could understand the Doctor's hope for peace between their two races, but she was ambivalent it would happen.
There seemed to be too much hatred on both sides.
Fortunately, the damage to the city of San Diego was light and the reveal of aliens was out there was renewed for another day, but Martha seriously feared for the time when aliens were revealed.
Would there be nothing but destruction or hope?
Martha had no idea, but with the things she had seen these past six months, she wasn't ruling anything out. With the Doctor, especially after how she had been attacked by that AI and a former member of UNIT (Adam Mitchell sounded like the kind of person Martha would not have any problems disliking, even if he sounded smart, but the Doctor had told her that she - Martha - was infinitely smarter), Martha had encountered Cybermen, an alien ship which had sent Earth a number of questions relating to science, engineering and medicine, although a large portion of it was mostly theoretical.
But right now the Doctor was entertaining her by telling her stories about her travels.
"Seriously? You've met Marco Polo?" Martha hissed while she paused, a coil of creamy spaghetti wrapped around her fork as she gaped at the Doctor in surprise.
"Yes. I had a lot of trouble with him, especially when he stole the TARDIS as a gift for Khan-," the Doctor was saying as she cut into her pizza.
"Khan, as in Kublai Khan?"
"Who else, Martha?" The Doctor asked rhetorically as she popped a piece of pizza in her mouth, hoping her friend did not ask too many questions about the whole mess with Marco, Khan, and Tegana at a point in her life where she was a long way from being the person she was now; while at the time her early travels with Ian and Barbara had caused her problems, she had admitted even then deep down the company of the two humans had made her rethink her views of aliens.
Martha chuckled and she ate some more of her carbonara, changing the subject around. "Doctor, I didn't want to bring this up, but what will happen after San Diego?"
The Doctor stiffened at the question and she sighed. "I don't know. But I don't care. We did the best we could and if the US government wanted to be immeasurably stupid, that's their problem."
Martha bit her tongue, she was now wishing that she'd kept her mouth shut but she had been curious about this for some time now.
"I heard from Mace this morning," the Doctor put down her knife and fork and sighed. "The new US president-elect is giving UNIT problems in the UN," she admitted, "he wants to take exclusive control of UNIT away from the UN. And he's been trying to use the mess in San Diego to do the job."
"What? Is he out of his mind?" Martha quickly swallowed some of the food she'd just forked into her mouth. "But UNIT is a UN organisation, does he really think that's gonna work?"
"Nobody ever said Winters was blessed with genius-level intelligence. He just wants two alien defence organisations under his control, and he wouldn't be the first US president to try such a tactic. UNIT has managed to remain outside of the US government's jurisdiction and control ever since its inception; the only reason it has been allowed to remain is to allow US citizens the chance to survive alien attacks, but while some US presidents are more enlightened some of them are so unbelievably selfish they don't know or care about the dangers. The mess in San Diego is being used by Winters, but the idiot is blaming the whole mess on us while painting a picture of the US being the responsible ones."
"How many alien defence organisations are there?" Despite being a member of UNIT for six months, there was still Martha did not know about her new job. But she buried the worry she had of Winters taking control of UNIT out of the UN's hands, although she could not see it happening, in the back of her mind for now.
"Dozens. There are some countries who share Winter's beliefs that UNIT should be under their control, but others know they don't have the resources to mount such a mission."
"Like who?"
"Twelve years ago there was a group of Chinese officials who became tired of UNIT not offering enough scientific knowledge when a group of Daleks and Sontarans came to Earth after the Sontarans were accidentally using a time corridor to reach Earth and the Daleks were attracted to it and they were both sent to Earth; there was a battle and a city block in Beijing was almost levelled," the Doctor said grimly.
Martha's eyes widened. "Oh my god," she whispered at the implications.
"It was all sorted out; I managed to get there just in time to stop the Sontarans detonating a bomb which would have destroyed the Daleks but only by reversing the Daleks' time travel equipment to send them back, but not before the Sontarans threw a matter vortex grenade through the corridor at the same time the Chinese military sent a nuclear warhead into the corridor at the same time," the Doctor said, shaking her head at just how overkill both the Sontarans and the humans happened to be.
"What's a matter vortex grenade?" Martha asked curiously.
"A space-time anomaly. If you have a sufficiently large amount of energy, like a nuclear reactor you can freeze the energy in a loop. A matter grenade is the same thing, but it compresses the energy down, looping it around. Listen, have you ever taken a coke can and shook it and it leaked?"
"Yeah," Martha nodded.
"Well, that's a small pop in comparison. The liquid-gas solubility is disturbed, but anyway, a matter vortex grenade contains the energy of potential explosions and releases it. Add that to an overloading time corridor power generator and a nuclear bomb, and the Daleks are destroyed," the Doctor said, "but the Chinese became tired of us keeping what little alien technology was left. UNIT recovered a lot of it, but by that point, they'd revoked diplomatic immunity and we were forced to leave."
"They only did that so they could have Dalek and Sontaran technology?"
"Yes, pretty much. And they got it, but I made sure we took the time technology away," the Doctor looked pointedly at her, "truthfully Martha, as long as your people take precautions, I have no problems about what you do with alien technologies so long as they're used properly and appropriately. But when it comes to time travel, that is a different story. I'm a Time Lord. I might be exiled, but the responsibility exists. I have seen alternate timelines where people made the mistake of playing games with time, only to make some change that causes more harm than good."
"And you were worried we'd misuse time travel?"
"I've seen it happen. Even my own people have misused our powers from time to time," the Doctor said, thinking about the Monk's nonchalance of changing history, Rani's genetic tampering without a care or a thought of the long-term misery it caused, and the Master's thoughtless attempts to conquer the universe while killing everyone around him with the same glee a small child had when riding a bicycle. "But the thing is your people just aren't ready to use time travel. You have terrorists who preach they're building a better world but are in fact murdering everyone who so much as disagrees with them. You have different countries around the planet, each one hip-deep in agendas. There are humans out there who don't care about anyone else while using a twisted greater good to justify their actions." The Doctor sent her a hard look. "Do you blame me for wanting to keep time travel away?"
Martha looked down at her food, starting to see where the Doctor was coming from. When the Doctor had put it like that, she could imagine the Time Lady was frightened humanity would change their own history so drastically they would erase themselves - was that possible?
"Could we erase ourselves from history, if we had time travel?"
"Only under specific circumstances," the Doctor said shortly, her tone making it clear this was one line of questions she did not like, "but it's truthfully best all around you don't have it until your society has grown up enough to use it. Anyway….what's that?"
Thrown by the sudden unexpected question, Martha looked up in surprise. "What's what?"
The Doctor's posture tensed up noticeably and she looked around, squinting. "A presence… can't you feel it?" She asked rather urgently in Martha's mind. "I can feel it. The best way I can compare it to what you know, Martha is it's like a mosquito buzzing around your head and growing louder with each second as it gets closer to the ear. Only this is telepathic, and it's getting," she winced as she closed her eyes, rubbing her forehead while she shored up her mental barriers, "stronger."
Martha was on her feet and by the Doctor's side before anyone could blink. "Doctor-," she tried to say but the Doctor shook her head. "We'd better get out of here."
The Doctor groaned. "Oh, but our evening will be ruined!" She whined.
Martha snorted, it never failed to amaze and amuse her how the Doctor, who sometimes spoke and acted like an old-fashioned but fair school headmistress, could sound so childish sometimes. "You're more important."
The Doctor chuckled and she gazed at Martha fondly. "You are a true doctor, Martha Jones. Never change. Ow!"
"Okay, that's it." Martha grabbed her purse and she took out one of her credit cards and ran off to pay.
"Please tell me they know it's got nothing to do with their food," the Doctor begged her as Martha helped her out of the restaurant. "I've been coming to this place for a decade, and I don't want to ruin their reputation."
"Of course not, I just said a terrible migraine related to work-related stress came on and that you couldn't concentrate on your food," Martha said reassuringly, inwardly pleased by how caring the Doctor was to the restaurant and its staff.
"Oh good. Francis is a talented chef and he doesn't deserve any grief."
"Francis?"
"Yeah, I met him twelve years ago and I helped him set up his restaurant business. He specialises in Italian cuisine, but he branches out to French and even American, on occasion. He also makes a mean full-English breakfast, although he adds pancakes and croissants if you want. Croissants are good, Martha," the Doctor grunted as Martha took them to the car. The telepathic pain was getting worse and worse, and as the Doctor worked on renewing her telepathic barriers. But what puzzled her the most was there was no voice, no impression of feelings from the other entity. All she was getting was a presence, a direction to where it was coming from but truthfully she would have gone regardless.
"Keep talking to me, Martha," she said when the telepathic noise and the effort she needed to keep the other presence out of her mind started to slip; she was hoping with Martha nearby then she'd have something to focus on. "Give me something to focus on."
"Hold on, what do you mean?" Martha asked as she got in the car.
The Doctor flinched as another wave of telepathic energy smacked into her mind while Martha put the key into the ignition. "I'm trying to block the presence out, but its taking all of my focus. Could you please act like a lifeline?" She asked.
"Sure," Martha blew out a breath, wondering how she was meant to do that. But the Doctor had more to say.
"Oh, and if I direct you to it, we can find out what the voice is. If I use your voice, your words to focus, I might be able to find out where its coming from."
Martha cottoned on. "You plan to use it like a compass."
"Exactly. Now come on, drive."
Once Martha got the car moving they moved through the busy streets of London. The traffic was, as the two women expected, terrible, but as they got through they found it easier. "What was it like, being a man twice?"
"What sort of question is that?"
"Oh, I am just curious. Hey, you told me to keep talking to you, and in any case, I can't think of any other thing to ask you right now," Martha asked, focusing on the traffic while she tried to keep her friend talking and focused on the conversation rather than on the pain.
The Doctor sighed as she dredged up her memories of her first and second lives. Her quirks, her likes and dislikes in both of her predecessor's lives. "It's hard to put into words, really. In my previous life, I'd had a rather easy time settling in, but when I regenerated again…. When I regained some of my mind in this body, and when the regeneration settled it was as if I'd been given a proper rebirth. In my first incarnation, I acted like an old man who'd seen everything, but in truth, I hadn't. I just liked to pretend I knew everything.
"But what did I know, Martha? I kidnapped two human schoolteachers, ripping them away from the lives they knew in a fit of panic, and I dragged them off in the TARDIS instead of letting them go off on their own. I did it all without thinking, I did it when the TARDIS wasn't in the best of conditions. By the time I calmed down, it was too late; I couldn't return them back to their own time and place, and for two years I tried to return them home. But I know, if it wasn't for those two, I wouldn't be who I am today, as time passed in the TARDIS I stopped ignoring the problems of the universe…right here," the Doctor said with a wince.
"Is it getting worse?"
"Yes. To answer your question, being a man… it was certainly different. I can't describe it, really. Aside from the physical changes which are obvious, being more top-heavy in the chest and…well, less lower down, I had to learn how to live as a female for a change. I think it took me, what was it, two years before I felt confident, but I had friends who helped."
"Friends?" Martha asked, trying not to think too much about the Doctor's statement about her physical changes and instead fixated on what she said.
"I had recently stopped a Cyber invasion involving the British Rocket Group," the Doctor explained, wincing under the blow of another telepathic punch - at least that was what she was beginning to view them as. "There were a few women working there, and when they learnt of my ability to regenerate, well they were more than happy to help me settle in.…Ow!"
Shocked by the vehemence of the Doctor's yelp in the car's enclosed space, Martha almost lost control of the car, but thanks to her steady hands and her self-control, she didn't veer off the road by accident. "What happened?"
The Doctor rubbed her forehead, eyes closed in agony. "I think… I think whatever's on Earth, in this city, is closer now. Keep driving Martha," she opened her eyes to see where the car was in relation to the presence. "Keep going down this street, then go left, and then right."
Martha nodded, getting ready to follow the instructions. "Do you have any theory about what's doing this?"
"No," the Doctor winced as she answered, the telepathic presence was getting stronger and stronger. "But whatever it is… it's strong. I'm concentrating on keeping it from getting into my mind… it knows I'm here, and it's trying to latch on. I can feel little probes trying to drill into my mind. Talking to you is giving me something to focus on myself, so thanks, Martha."
"You're welcome," Martha smiled, genuinely touched by the compliment before her smile faded a little in thought while she glanced in the rear-view mirror. "Doctor, I don't know a great deal about Time Lord minds, but how powerful does something have to be to get into your mind?"
The Doctor sighed as she tried to concentrate on the question. She wasn't sure how best to answer that question since humans, barring one or two, especially those who'd lived near a temporal anomaly or crack developed psychic abilities, like Old Martha Tyler during that mess with the Fendahleen when the Time Lords sent her to deal with the problem of the relative continuum displacement zone that had grown wider as the Time Scanner probed harder into it, hadn't developed the right terminology for telepathy.
The problem was what was trying to get inside her mind was just persistent. "There are beings in the universe who could break through a Time Lord mind, no problem. Sometimes it's a powerful intrusion where the invading mind is just capable of passing through telepathic barriers like they weren't even there. Sometimes it can be a subtle intrusion when I'm feeling particularly strong emotions, and it just rides the emotion into my mind. This one is just painful," the Doctor explained with a grimace. "In 1980, I had a very nasty experience involving Sutekh, the last Osirian."
"Sutekh? Osirian?"
"The Osirians shaped the Ancient Egyptian culture, showed them how to build pyramids, sphinxes, and the Egyptians worshipped the main Osirians assigned to guide Earth as gods," the Doctor explained. "Sutekh was nothing more than a dangerous psychopath who became jealous of Horus and his talents, so he stewed for centuries until his anger led to hatred, hatred for all living things. In the end, that anger led to the destruction of hundreds of worlds and the extinction of hundreds of life forms before he was stopped and imprisoned. I finished the job by ageing the bastard to death in a time corridor. Long story, I'll tell you later."
Martha nodded, dazed and confused already by the idea of aliens appearing to the Egyptians, but the idea had some merit even if it sounded like something from sci-fi. Stargate, or something.
"We're almost there," the Doctor said, wincing and closing her eyes with a hiss, but she saw enough to see they were passing Regent's Park.
"I hope there aren't many people around," Martha commented as she looked around the area.
At that point, the Doctor didn't give a damn if whatever alien was in the city right this moment was in the centre of a football stadium halfway through a match. She was under too much pressure to keep this thing from poking its way through her mind, and it hurt.
"Find a place to park, Martha. I'm going out on foot."
"Wouldn't it make more sense to drive around until we're close?"
"Yeah, ideally. But my brain feels like it's going to burn out any moment," the Doctor gasped.
Martha quickly found a parking place for them and the Doctor shot out of the car so quickly Martha barely had time to blink in surprise. But she got out of the car, hurrying after her friend over the grounds of the park. She was only just able to catch up with the Doctor before she heard a cry.
"Doctor!?" Martha yelled, quickening her pace, relieved she'd kicked off her heels to chase after the Doctor through the park.
"Martha," the Doctor's voice was hoarse. "B-be careful."
Martha slowed down, worried. "Why?"
"Because…. The creature is on me."
Martha edged forwards and her eyes widened in horrified shock. "Oh my god."
The Doctor was standing in front of her near a number of trees and hedges, but she was covered in what looked like the giant strands of a sticky spider's web. The Doctor was grimacing, but the web-thing wasn't moving or hurting her as far as Martha was able to see, and then she remembered the telepathic pains the Doctor had gotten. Whatever was happening had to be mentally affecting her.
"Doctor-?" Martha walked over slowly.
"Martha, stay away," the Doctor whispered hoarsely. "I think…this creature is a telepathic symbiont; an organism which survives by bonding to another. But… oh, wait…," a look of understanding crept over the Doctor's face. "No, it's not a symbiont in the traditional sense. It needs to survive by using the life pattern of a host on alien worlds, but when it returns to its own planet, it will let me go."
"It just wants to return home?" Martha said, hoping to be sure she understood what the Doctor had just said.
"Yes."
"Well, it will have a long wait since you're stuck here," Martha knew it was insensitive and approaching a sensitive subject, but she hoped the Doctor didn't take offence. Unfortunately, the Doctor's expression dropped into a scowl.
"Thanks, Martha. I am more than aware of my inability to leave in the TARDIS. But," her expression brightened and she looked around as if imparting a secret, "I have a way out."
Martha couldn't believe it; she had known the Doctor a short time, yeah, but she had come to know her friend just wanted to regain her freedom and her lost knowledge of time travel. If she had a way of leaving Earth why was she still here?
The Doctor grimaced and the web creature made a gurgling sound before it shrunk down into a compact sticky ball. "I'll drive," she announced.
X
"Wow!" Martha gasped as she looked around. "You own this place?"
"No. I used UNIT to take over the lease a few years ago," the Doctor's voice was strained.
It certainly looked bleak to Martha. She and the Doctor had walked into an abandoned tower block after a car journey which had lasted around twenty minutes or so, using a transmat portal to reach the very top floor, but along the way Martha and the Doctor had passed through rooms and office space filled with old desks, and judging from the amount of dust and dirt, the place hadn't seen a cleaner in a long time. And likely never would, if the Doctor had her way.
"But why, I mean why are keeping it around?" Martha asked as she followed the Doctor onto the roof, taking note of the way her friend was grimacing, and she wondered just how much pain the web-thing was causing her.
The Doctor winced as the web creature sent another jab into her mind. "This is why," she said, taking her sonic screwdriver out and triggered it.
Martha jumped back in shock when the invisibility screen covering the spaceship suddenly cut out (was it invisibility? Or was it something else?). Towering over her and hovering about an inch above the surface of the roof was a large spaceship (Martha wasn't sure if it was large, but it was very big), and thanks to the automatic lightning on its hull she was able to pick out its shape. It was flat, like the flying saucers she had heard about, but it was shaped more like a giant boomerang or a stealth bomber with a dome-like top. Underneath were arrays and antennae, pointing in all directions, including downward. Dominating the underside of the ship was a large platform mounted and it seemed to be rotating.
"What kind of ship is that?" Martha asked, momentarily wondering about her own safety before she pushed that aside; she knew the Doctor wouldn't have brought them up here if she didn't think it would be safe.
"It's a Jathaa sun glider. Torchwood shot this one down in 1997, and they took the ship in for study. Do you remember that Sycorax ship back last year?" The Doctor asked as she led the way towards the ship.
"Yeah."
"Torchwood shot that ship down using reverse-engineered technology from this sun glider. The crew were killed, but Torchwood still ripped it apart," the Doctor spat angrily as she jumped through the airlock. Martha followed suit and she looked around with interest. The sun glider interior was in a rich dark gold in colour. Along the walls were conduits and screens, and as the Doctor led her through the ship, she could see missing wall panels exposing the alien technology for all to see. They passed a panel where the interior cavity was hollow, with no components inside, exposing trailing cables and pipes.
"Torchwood?" Martha asked rhetorically.
The Doctor paused and stopped to turn. "What do you mean?"
"Did Torchwood do that?"
"Oh yes. But it's not a problem. That particular conduit handles the tertiary weapons system, and I won't need that. Now, come along. We need to get this creature away soon."
"But how did you get this ship?" Martha asked as they walked through the corridors. They found more open panels, but while a few of them were devoid of any kind of components, some of them looked like they had been worked on recently.
The Doctor didn't break her stride as she went through the corridors. "When Torchwood 1 closed down, UNIT went in before the other Torchwood cells moved in to take out whatever was left behind. We confiscated everything of value. I took this ship before they even moved in, and I moved it over to this part of the city. I set up the perception filter to stop anyone noticing it, and I got to work."
Martha wondered for a moment what would drive the Doctor to go to so much trouble. Why would she want to salvage an alien starship-? And then it became clear to her. "You plan to leave Earth in this ship, don't you?" She demanded.
Why was she wildly surprised?
She had known for a while the Doctor wanted to leave Earth behind and resume her travels in time and space. But she had assumed she wanted to travel in both, but now it seemed she was willing to settle for space travel.
The Doctor turned and looked at her. Her expression was serious. "Yes," she didn't try to deny it. "Martha, I've been stuck on Earth for a long time; I barely tasted true freedom, especially when I managed to escape before and the Time Lords sent me back to an even further point in time, and they wiped my memory. I have had to cope with amnesia, but I was stuck here unless they let me out on a leash. I couldn't use the time corridor technology left behind when the Daleks attacked, but that doesn't matter. With this ship, I can leave Earth without worrying. I have spent the last year fixing this ship up for launch, and when it's ready I'll leave and I could find another time travel method. There are dozens of forms out there, but the Time Lords are waiting for me to leave Earth's time zone. They won't be watching anywhere else."
"Are you sure about that?" Martha asked uncertainly. After what she'd heard about the Time Lords, anything was possible with them.
"Quite sure," the Doctor smiled.
"And UNIT doesn't know about this ship?" Martha asked with a pointed smile.
"No," the Doctor said happily without any shame in her voice.
"How do you know I won't tell them?" Martha pointed out the flaw in the Doctor's logic.
"Oh," the Doctor floundered when she realised she shouldn't have been too confident of Martha not betraying this to UNIT. "I could take you places."
"Like where?" Martha asked, her eyes wide suddenly as she realised what the ship could do even now. Suddenly images of worlds that she had only seen thanks to UNIT's stellar cartography labs which used reverse-engineered sensors from alien technology popped into her mind, and she realised that now she could visit some of them with the Doctor.
"Well, let's begin with the world of this creature first, mm?" The Doctor asked with a pained smile, and Martha suddenly saw more strain on the Doctor's face.
"Is it getting worse?"
"Oh yes. OW! Stop it!" The Doctor hissed. "I know you're impatient, but attacking me isn't going to help, is it?"
"What's it doing?" Martha asked, feeling foolish for having forgotten the alien which was now connected to her friend. She instinctively tried to step nearer to the Doctor, but the Time Lady stepped back.
"No, Martha. Don't step too close. Right now, it's using me as a life-support machine, soaking up oxygen from me since it can't really survive in Earth's atmosphere, but I don't know what it would do if you got really close now we're on this ship," the Doctor closed her eyes as she felt yet another attempt by the alien to go through her mind and her memories.
Stay out! I'm going to help you. But I need my mind and I won't let you hurt her, she sent to the alien and she genuinely did not give a damn how it perceived her warning.
The alien relaxed when the Doctor made it very clear in her mind she would not take it back if she didn't have total control over her body. The Doctor let out a breath when she felt the pressure on her mind lifting slightly. It was still there, but she felt confident she was in charge of herself. Leading the way onto the control deck, the Doctor smiled as she took in her work. Jathaa were much like humans with their body shapes, so she hadn't needed to do much to adapt the ship for her own use in that area.
The Doctor took the command and control console and she began booting up the systems. She turned around and smirked as she took in Martha's open-eyed curiosity as she looked around the bridge of the ship.
"Well, what do you think?"
"It's not bigger on the inside," Martha commented, remembering how she had seen the inside of the TARDIS.
"No, it's not," the Doctor replied in agreement. She was distracted by the controls and the computers. The Jathaa had an annoying collection of procedures to activate their ships and power them up for escape velocity out of a planet's atmosphere, to say nothing of what they did as they travelled the galaxy. "Oh come on, I thought I took care of that."
"What's wrong?" Martha walked over but keeping out of reach in case the alien reached for her.
"The sun glider. It's got dozens of startup programs that make it slow. Trouble is thanks to Torchwood the computers are slower than normal," the Doctor replied irritably as she stabbed at the controls until finally, the bridge powered up. As she looked around, Martha noticed the TARDIS standing in a corner. She wondered if having the old time machine onboard the ship was a wise idea since it was possible the Time Lords were capable of tracking it down, but she hoped the Doctor had seen the flaw.
The Doctor laughed and clapped her hands, "Excellent. It's working. Now, just to program its course for escape velocity…"
The deck lurched and Martha was forced to sit down quickly. She searched desperately for some kind of straps, but there wasn't anything there. "Where's the seatbelt on this thing?"
"Well, there aren't any. Seatbelts are primitive. The Jathaa use deceleration chambers to keep a body stabilised as it jumps in and out of lightspeed, but for planetary entry and escape, there's a gravity field which automatically compensates for any acceleration," the Doctor said as she worked before she finished inputting the command, and she turned to Martha with a smile. "Well, the biggest step you've ever taken, Martha Jones. You ready?"
Martha nodded, too nervous to say a word.
"Good. Off we go then," the Doctor tapped the execute command control, and the ship's deck lurched slightly as the sun glider moved. In front of Martha the forward viewer automatically turned on, like a Star Trek viewscreen as the ship shot into Earth's atmosphere with the speed of a bullet or a missile, and yet it was as smooth as a train moving along a track.
The Doctor turned to Martha, and she grinned when she saw the look of awe and wonder on her friend's face as she looked out into the darkness of space. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"
"Oh yeah, it is," Martha chuckled and she turned to the Doctor. "So how long would it take for us to get to where this creature comes from?'
"A good few weeks, yet. But in the meantime, this glider's been powered down for a decade. It needs fuel," the Doctor replied as she took a look at the controls and the readouts. She had moved the sun glider into the open air after Torchwood had trapped the ship in their Canary Wharf tower for so long, and the solar energy accelerators which were thousand times more powerful and more efficient than the photovoltaic panels used on Earth had done wonders in restoring much of the energy systems, but it needed more.
Much more.
The Doctor sighed as the sun glider turned and headed in a new direction.
"What's going on?"
"We're going to pick up the fuel we need for our journey. I've already laid in the course. The sun glider's computer has taken over automatically," the Doctor replied.
"But what's the fuel?" Martha asked.
"Energy from the sun. Jathaa sun gliders draw their power from the stars themselves. They dive into the star, and they collect as much stellar material as they could in order to soak up the energy and convert it to useable energy," the Doctor explained as she sat back and relaxed. "The technique is smoother but similar to a fusion scoop, which does the same. But the scoop just tears pieces of stellar material away and badly damages the sun's capacity for nuclear fusion."
"But why? I mean, if they are aliens then why don't they produce nuclear fusion for themselves?"
"Well, they could if their solar system has the resources for producing a working nuclear fusion reactor, Martha," the Doctor smiled softly at Martha, "but the Jathaa weren't as lucky as you are. They know how to split the atom, which helped them a lot with discovering tachyon particles which are the key for their faster-than-light technology, but they wanted an artistic means of getting to other planets, so they decided to scoop solar matter and convert it to energy for their drives."
"You can travel faster-than-light using a sun? How?"
"The Jathaa discovered tachyon particles, a faster-than-light particle which travels through several different planes - hyperspace along with slipspace and subspace, to name a few, although some of them do travel through the Time Vortex the TARDIS uses - and they discovered a way of creating a tachyon powered vortex which allows them to travel faster-than-light. Think of it like a…a bubble which passes the ship through different dimensions, just so slightly, and it pushes the ship to its destination without compromising general relativity," the Doctor explained as she checked the gravimetric engines. "Although I wish it did use hyperspace or one of the other dimensions. It would make life easier."
To her relief, the power systems were holding up, but that was likely down to the fusion generators she'd hooked to the engines in her attempt to bypass the need for the Jathaa sun glider to waste so much time and travel to a nearby star for a recharge. But unfortunately, the engines weren't designed for it, and the Jathaa with their damn traditions had made it impossible for her to completely convert the system, and it was even harder to convert a damaged sun glider. She'd done the best she could manage, but the ship had suffered some damage to it thanks to Torchwood.
"We're heading into the sun? Earth's sun?"
The Doctor turned and nodded. "Don't worry, Martha. I checked the shielding, this ship is fine. In any case, the Jathaa developed the technology needed to shield a crew from the intense conditions of a star."
"You mean we won't burn up?" Martha asked, looking uncertainly at the Doctor. She trusted the Doctor completely but she was worried. She knew enough of the sun to know it wasn't a place you should hang around in a spacecraft.
"No," the Doctor replied, looking at the controls, checking the speed. "Oh good, the plasma drive is activating and it's boosting our speed."
"How long will it take to get there?"
"Oh, a good few hours. Did you bring a book or a deck of cards? Or do you want to go into one of the Lightspeed chambers?"
"Lightspeed what?" Martha asked uncertainly.
The Doctor stood up and she walked to a ribbed section of the command deck and she gestured to a few platforms. Martha stood up and walked over, noting as she did there were others like those platforms in other parts of the bridge. "What are they?"
"Lightspeed chambers. They shield the body from tachyons and stellar radiation and lock the body into a stasis field for a short time. Tachyons allow rather basic time travel jump into the future as they travel through space, and they can also be unstable unless you're shielded in a stabilised environment," the Doctor explained, "but these things also have serious side-effects on organic bodies. So they have to be locked in a stasis field. I've been trying to replace the shunt drive for a while, replace it with something much better. Sadly I haven't had much luck."
"What did you want to replace it with?"
"A hyperdrive which would teleport this ship through hyperspace. Anyway, I've finished powering up the stasis units," the Doctor glanced at Martha, "all we have to do now is step onto the platforms and we will be in stasis for a bit while this ship is re-energised."
"Hold on, why do we need to be on these platforms?" Martha asked to assuage her curiosity.
The Doctor sighed under her breathe. She had encouraged Martha to always ask questions and given her impressive intellect, the human doctor had risen to the challenge of expanding her knowledge and horizons, which she had done thanks to their friendship. "I haven't really finished my modifications to this ship," she confessed, seeing Martha's eyes shoot open in shock. "Don't worry, I didn't damage the ship even more. But I did have to adjust their life-support and gravity systems to take into account non-Jathaa lifeforms. I wasn't expecting an early trip, so I haven't installed anything like food or water. The good news is I've installed the TARDIS onboard following the mess with Adam Mitchell, so we won't go hungry. But it will take time for us to reach the sun. For the time being, I need to give the engines a little kick."
"What do you mean?" Martha asked suspiciously.
"I'll show you," the Doctor said and she led the way to the engineering level. Martha followed her, wondering what the Doctor meant by that.
It was almost like they were inside a futuristic car engine after being miniaturised to the size of an ant as they walked on walkways while being surrounded by pipes and twisted conduits which showed an almost human-like design although with an alien twist.
Do all alien ships look like this? Martha asked herself, remembering all the science fiction movies and TV shows she had seen in the past, and while this place was similar to the grittier engine rooms she had seen before, there was an almost human design to the conduits and pieces of machinery she couldn't even begin to grasp.
Martha followed the Doctor to a wide section of the engine room which seemed to have been separated from the rest of the structure by thick bulkheads. In the centre of the room was a tall thick cylinder that came up to Martha's elbow. She watched with increasing concern as the Doctor quickly donned some kind of suit which reminded Martha of a radiation suit. And then she realised the truth.
"Hold on, is this ship nuclear?" She demanded.
"Sadly yes. The Jathaa sun glider is powered by a nuclear fission reactor to give its sub-light engines the power they need to move while they draw on the nearly limitless power of a sun to generate the necessary tachyons to travel faster-than-light," the Doctor explained, briskly handing Martha a similar radiation suit, which Martha took gingerly giving the Doctor the time needed to finish putting on her own suit. "This reactor powers the sun-glider's plasma rockets and the gravimetric engines, but the faster-than-light engines are powered by the suns these ships go towards for power absorption."
"It sounds complicated," Martha commented, and it was complicated. The Jathaa seemed to have so many systems for their ships which seemed both unnecessary and seemed to burn through so much power.
"It is, but you have to bear in mind their traditions. You need to remember what I told you about the Jathaa; they live in a star system with few planets and moons, so they've never had the resources other races possess which allow for the production of cleaner, more efficient energies. They also evolved with a deep worship of stars, and when they discovered that tachyons could be created with high-energy levels they realised they needed a power source which was just as good to get there when they saw they had no choice but to absorb some of the matter from their sun to create the necessary tachyons to leave," the Doctor zipped up her suit and she was just picking up the box currently behind the fuel drop.
"Couldn't they have done that with nuclear fission, and not bother with something like this?" Martha pointed out the flaw in the logic the Jathaa had used to justify their methods.
The Doctor chuckled, surprising Martha. "Oh, you've caught the flaw, have you? I think it goes back to the days they used solar-sails, and they realised that only through the use of stars will they travel the cosmos. It makes little sense to me either, but it works. And it is tedious. Here's your hood," she added, passing over a large padded and armoured hood over to Martha who took it.
"What are you gonna use to power this ship?" Martha asked.
In answer, the Doctor bent down and picked something up from behind the fuel drop. It was a large heavy metal case with the classic black y shape indicating dangerous radioactive materials.
"Where did you get that?" Martha asked in surprise. For a moment she wondered to herself if the Doctor had used her UNIT contacts to get it, but she dismissed that thought quickly. While UNIT could get their hands on radioactive materials, they would likely not turn a blind eye to anything the Doctor would do with them although she knew they wouldn't assume she was building some kind of doomsday weapon.
A sheepish look crept over the Doctor's face, making Martha worried. "What did you do?"
"Do you remember that theft of plutonium a few months ago?"
"Yeah, but-oh, you didn't?!"
"I did," the Doctor replied shamelessly before she sighed at the expression of dismay on her friend's face. "Martha, I have been trapped on Earth for a long time. Time travel or space travel, I don't care which I use anymore. I just want to leave. And there was no reason to worry about the plutonium; it was inside the TARDIS. The old girl has her faults but the TARDIS is indestructible, and since I always keep her isolated nowadays nobody can find her and get inside. Besides, I needed the plutonium pellets to power this ship up. The sun glider was the only thing I could find quickly."
Martha wasn't sure what to say or think. She knew the Doctor's priority besides protecting Earth was to find ways of leaving the planet quickly and easily, but she could see ways the theft of the plutonium could have blown up - literally - in the Doctor's face.
While she was thinking about the potential repercussions of what had happened, she noticed the Doctor bend down and slowly take out a plutonium pellet. It reminded her of that scene in Back to the Future when Doc Brown fuelled up the DeLorean's flux capacitor (she idly wondered if time travel could work like that, but before she could ask the Doctor for sure), the plutonium pellet was sucked into the reactor.
The Doctor repeated the process with another pellet before she adjusted the machinery of the engines and she signalled it was safe to remove their hoods.
"It's safe. The reactor is lined with lead and several other alloys for shielding," she said, leaning heavily on the reactor.
Instantly Martha was at her side. "What's wrong?"
"It's the alien. When it realised what I was doing, I felt it becoming excited. It tired me out as I loaded the reactor," the Doctor's voice was a whisper, and Martha realised the Time Lady was clearly struggling to stand upright. "I'm okay, Martha. I just need to rest. Keep me talking, it helps."
Martha bit her lip. She hated this cycle where the alien symbiont would wear down her friend to the point where she'd become exhausted, and she hated it more when she took into account there was nothing she could do. She was a doctor, for fuck's sake! She was supposed to help people. Okay, granted, the Doctor was not a human being, even though she embodied humanity's compassion better than other humans and hated it when humans just dismissed those traits, but Martha hated not being able to help.
"Tell me about the Jathaa. Who are they? What are they like?"
The Doctor visibly looked like she was straining to get the information out of her mind. "The Jathaa live in a solar system with only a few planets and moons. They have only eight hour days because of their orbit, and the close proximity to their sun has caused them to both resent and worship their star although many of their customs and religion is based on pagan ritualism, and ever since they discovered high science like cosmology and nuclear fission, the Jathaa have been pushing through the development of space travel. They wanted to colonise other worlds since their own has caused so much trouble."
"So, they developed their warp drives and then went out, yeah?" Martha asked as she took her friend's arm and helped her out of the cumbersome suit.
"No, not quite. They colonised a few of the planets in their system, using solar sailcraft. They had the epiphany they could use their sun to go anywhere; it had turned their world into a sun-baked desert, it could help them get into space. Then they discovered the tachyon particle and they quickly learnt to use it as a means of getting through space, but they realised to get anywhere meaningful they would have to use a huge amount of energy to create enough tachyons to move them through space. So they developed the sun-glider's fusion absorbers to do the job," the Doctor said as she clumsily helped Martha. "They didn't have the resources to create a proper fusion power system, so they decided to make do with fusion energy taken from a star. Instead of ripping the energy from a sun, they absorb it, sucking out small amounts like a kid sucking coca-cola from a bottle through a straw."
Martha listened raptly. She had come to enjoy listening and asking about the different alien cultures out there in the universe. "Surely they discovered better forms of travel when they got out?"
"Oh, they did. They've been exposed to jump technology and hyperspace tunnels for centuries, but while they do use them and have built ships to use them, they do make use of sun gliders. It causes havoc with their interstellar relations because the Jathaa prefers their traditional practices to slingshot around a star, soaking up solar energy while they slingshot around it while they generate the tachyons to go faster-than-light. But thanks to some good and cunning negotiations, the Jathaa get away with it frequently. Most pilots prefer them for nostalgia purposes, mostly," the Doctor smiled shakily. "That type of nostalgia seems to be shared by every race in the universe; humans, for instance, your people still make use of old cars, and it's not strange for you to occasionally use old fashioned boats, trains, and aircraft. It's not too different for aliens. Even Time Lords can be nostalgic. On Gallifrey, the current modern favourite TARDIS is the Type 70, but relatively speaking it can be seen as an antique. Many Time Lords favour the older, more experienced timeships, and so do I."
X
Thanks to the boost of energy, it only took the sun glider a couple of days to travel to the sun. Martha was frightened and she was understandably reluctant to step into the suspended animation booth even as the Doctor reassured her she had made certain the sun glider was safe and the ship's automatic protocols would make sure they didn't get roasted or crushed by the intense heat and radiation of the sun and the stronger gravity.
Torchwood had been overzealous in shooting down the ship as it got too close to their precious airspace, but since they had only focused on the weapon system when they discovered its power, they had concentrated their research into that part of the ship while leaving the majority alone although they had studied the nuclear power plant to see if it was dangerous and if the aliens had conceived of a more powerful form of fission.
Torchwood wanted Britain to be truly independent of other countries, although if they would ever rebuild properly after the mess with the Cybermen, the Doctor neither knew nor cared. Their actions against the harmless space travellers spoke for themselves, with their stupid motto guiding their actions.
While she would like it if there were dozens of alien groups protecting humanity and preparing them for the day when humans took their place in the interstellar community, the Doctor hated Torchwood for their sense of entitlement. They were immeasurably lucky the planet was protected under galactic law from all but the more extreme powers who didn't care for those treaties. The Doctor wouldn't mind Torchwood shooting down Dalek saucers, but she didn't like it when they shot down ships belonging to people who just wanted to travel the universe the same as she did.
The Jathaa had little to offer besides their weapons. Their reactor had ensured their ship was more or less undamaged. The Doctor had little doubt Torchwood had been disappointed the Jathaa reactor was fission, and nothing better but there was still a lot they could do with the reactor on this ship. The nuclear reactor was no more sophisticated than the models used on Earth.
The sophisticated AI released them from suspended animation (with some help from the TARDIS) as they were moving around the sun. Martha gasped as she took in the sight through the polarised viewing screens, but the sheer magnitude of the star's light was still incredible. But what surprised Martha the most was no matter how hot it was outside, the inside of the ship was incredibly cool. There was some kind of truly sophisticated cooling system involved, but Martha was unconcerned about that as she took in the sights around the ship. As the sun glider dove down into the star, soaking up the star's energy, Martha saw displays on the consoles light up. Thanks to the translation circuits of the TARDIS, Martha was able to read them.
TACHYON PRODUCTION: RISING.
RATIO AT SIXTY-FIVE VENS.
Martha stood next to the Doctor, watching as the sun glider looped around the sun seven times, soaking up large amounts of energy from it. As they looped around the sun, the tachyon count rose up and up until it was at four-thousand vens (just what that was, she didn't know) before the ship began breaking out of the star's gravity. She watched as the ship rose out of the star's gravity gracefully, and she got the feel of the ship as an interstellar seagull gliding above the ground before moving on the wind. For the first time, Martha wondered just how much time it had taken for the people who'd built this ship to come up with the means of defying gravity like this without their ship being dragged back down and then roasted to a crisp, but as the ship seemed to catch a crescent-shaped line of flame from the star, and rode on it like a rollercoaster car about to loop the loop, Martha gasped in awe.
The ship's bow rose up like an old fashioned clipper ship riding on the waves of a storm before it crashed down, again. The sun glider rose up and it continued to circle the sun in a slingshot.
"We'd better get into the suspended animation platforms, Martha," the Doctor warned, standing up after finishing her programming of the navigational computer. "We don't want to be caught in the tachyon shunt."
"Okay. How long will it take for us to reach the planet?"
"At least two weeks. The sun glider needed to soak enough energy from the sun to produce enough tachyons, but it's been out of practice for a decade. It needed to get the feel of it," the Doctor said as she walked to the platform.
Martha didn't follow. "So, we are going to be stuck in those things for two weeks?"
"I'm afraid so. I told you before, Martha, using tachyons for faster-than-light is nothing like hyperspace travel or transmat jumping. They play havoc with your timekeeping. Now come on. The sooner we do this, the better."
Martha nodded. She walked over to where the Doctor was and she took a deep breath as she stepped onto the platform. It wasn't a big deal, really, but she knew enough about sci-fi to know this thing could go terribly wrong. What if they were blasted off course by something and they ended up asleep for centuries? The Doctor would likely be okay with that, given how old she was, but Martha had her entire life ahead of her. She didn't want to be trapped.
"Okay," she breathed before she sent the Doctor a look. "Just promise me something?"
The Doctor tilted her head quizzically. "What?" She asked curiously.
"Promise me you will at least find a better ship," Martha said pointedly because she didn't like all of this wasting time. There was no telling what the alien was doing to the Doctor's physiology, and the sun glider was causing more problems than it solved.
"Trust me, Martha, the Jathaa can keep these traditions. Getting a different ship was always a priority."
X
Martha blinked in surprise a moment later when she found the Doctor standing in front of her. "Have a nice two-week nap, sleepyhead?" The Doctor grinned mischievously at Martha as she stepped out of the stasis platform. Martha shook her head. It didn't feel like two weeks, not for her. It felt like a second ago since she had stepped onto the platform, and now she was being told to step off it.
"Doctor, I've only just stepped onto this thing," Martha protested.
"I know. That's the beauty of the best stasis systems; you use one and you feel as if you've blinked and then you're where you want to be," the Doctor smiled before she held out a hand. Martha smiled and took it and she stepped off the platform.
"Are we there?" Martha asked.
It might be a silly question to ask an alien woman who seemed to know what she was doing, but Martha had found asking questions to be the best thing to do when she was uncertain about something. Besides she had never once travelled faster-than-light before, and she just did not like the thought of being in suspended animation since it brought out fears the whole thing might have failed and they'd been asleep for centuries. It wouldn't be a problem for the Doctor given her Time Lady nature, but she had roots and a career on Earth.
With the TARDIS not working properly and no source of time tech which would get them back to the 21st century, they'd be stuck.
The Doctor smirked at her, and Martha sighed. She had learnt the Doctor had the power to read minds or just hear the surface thoughts which would be as audible as a birdsong.
"We are, and we're still in the same time zone," the Doctor grinned at her, making Martha roll her eyes in embarrassment for a second.
"Okay, so what now?" Martha asked, hoping the Doctor would drop the subject.
A look of pain flashed over the Time Lady's face, and Martha leaned in but the Doctor held up her hand to stop her. "Don't," she whispered, "it's okay. When the alien saw through my optic nerves the sight of its homeworld, it sent waves of delight through me. But it won't free itself until it's on the planet below. It's a really neat ultimatum."
"So let's go down," Martha said practically.
"It's not that simple, Martha. There are worlds in your solar system where the atmosphere is unbreathable, and this one qualifies as dangerous. The atmosphere is poisonous to human life, and it's an environment a Time Lord would find unpleasant," the Doctor said grimly.
"Can't you persuade the alien to let you go?" Martha asked, already thinking that if the Doctor let it out in the airlock, the creature would release her friend.
"I'm trying to, Martha, but the truth of the matter is it is paranoid. It thinks if it lets go, I will go back on my word," the Doctor shook her head as the illogic behind the lifeform's attitude. It had been reading her mind even if she tried to keep it out of her innermost memories. Rule one when you had an alien in your mind, keep it as far out of her mind as you could. Alien entities had a nasty habit of taking memories and using them against you, and she'd had enough experience to see the truth of that over the centuries.
Rule two, try to make the alien see you were not going to harm it. Unfortunately, this alien didn't seem to believe her.
Just as she was thinking that she felt an impression from the alien.
"I should be okay, so long as I wear a breathing mask. It won't be as good as the helmet of a spacesuit, but the alien will only let me go when it absorbs some of its atmosphere," the Doctor said after she'd made sense of the aliens' message. "But I need to take a broad spectrum nano injection. The nanites in the solution will stop my body from feeling the worst effects of the atmosphere."
"How toxic is the atmosphere?" Martha asked worriedly, wondering just how much more the Doctor could take; she had learnt enough of the Doctor to know her body could take a great deal before her body found it couldn't cope so she regenerated. Would she near that point if she went out there?
"Put it this way, Martha, if your people increased the amount of toxic waste on your planet and dumped it for a year and poisoned everything from water and air, it would take at least a hundred years for your world to come even close to where this one is," the Doctor said grimly.
X
The landing could have gone better than Martha would have wished. While the Doctor was skilled with science and technology, and she was good at driving a car even if her modified cars sometimes made Martha wonder if she'd stuck a rocket in, she was terrible at landing spaceships. At first, she tried going in fast, but she'd needed to pull out when she realised they were going in too steeply, scaring Martha to death, and then she had done it slowly but they'd had to fly upwards once more when she realised they had no space to land.
In the end, the Doctor had decided to trust the automatic control (much to the Time Lady's embarrassment), but when the ship finally landed the Doctor shot out off her chair and went to the airlock and donned a space suit while Martha followed sedately, smirking at the Time Lady even as the Doctor zipped up the suit but before she fixed the neck gorget, the Doctor took out a long slim vial filled with a colourless liquid that seemed to sparkle more than water normally did and she slotted the vial into what looked like a futuristic hypodermic before she pressed it into her neck and pressed the plunger. The Doctor grimaced but she took a deep breath, rubbing her face.
"Does that hurt?"
"Yes."
"Does it help?"
"I won't know until I get out there," the Doctor replied as she fixed the mask onto her face. With help from the Doctor, Martha got into her own spacesuit and after they equalised the pressures of the gasses outside with the airlock they stepped out onto the surface of the new planet.
Martha gasped as she looked around. It was like walking out of the house as it stood in a desert, and she was taking a walk in the open air while she watched the rise of the sun before it baked the ground like cookies in an oven. The sun was in the distance, but it was giving only a small amount of light over a small amount of the landscape, so much of the surface of the planet was wrapped in dark shadows that made it virtually impossible for her to see beyond or get an idea of the characteristics of the land nearby. Some of the shadows she saw blended naturally with golden brown-reddish rock but the shadows themselves were purple or dark red.
But it was the sky which was striking; near the sun it seemed the atmosphere was no different from that of Earth with no stars seen in the day sky unless you looked closely. But here the atmosphere near the sun seemed to mingle with a night sky with stars above. The contrasts were so striking and exotic Martha had to accept the fact they were on Earth.
"Wow!" She whispered.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" There was a smile in the Doctor's voice as she looked around the planet with interest; she might have a parasite on her, but that wasn't dampening her enthusiasm. "Now you know why I want my freedom back so badly, and what I'm willing to do to get back out here."
Martha wasn't sure what to say about that. For some reason her mind drifted to the stories she had heard of the Doctor's early years in UNIT where she'd been drawn into a parallel universe where Earth was destroyed in a scientific experiment which went really wrong, and when the Doctor found herself in an alternate 22nd century where the Daleks invaded Earth. Somehow she had the thought of the Doctor betraying Earth just to escape the planet, but while she knew the Doctor would never do that.
But then again she had watched in shock as the Doctor took out that crate of plutonium pellets. If she was willing to steal them, what else could she do?
No, she shut down the thoughts quickly. The Doctor may be forced to do terrible things, and her exile to Earth might have had its ups and downs, but she was a long way to being pushed in that direction.
"It's gorgeous," Martha whispered, answering the Doctor as she looked around again. She doubted she could ever get enough of the view, and she cursed herself for not bringing a camera. Suddenly she felt something gently thump her in the chest.
"Here, I packed this just in case," the Doctor said, and Martha looked down at what the Doctor was lightly prodding her with and Martha's eyes brightened when she saw the boxy distinctive form of a digital camera. She took it clumsily, pleased by her friend's thoughtfulness, and she needed a few moments to work out how to use it with the cumbersome gloves but after a few experimental tries she got it down soon.
"Come on, Martha," the Doctor's voice put an end to the sightseeing moment, and Martha looked around and she saw the web-like alien shifting itself under the Doctor's suit, and she could hear over the radio link between them the Doctor was groaning.
"Is it bothering you again, the alien?" She asked, mentally preparing for an appointment with the Doctor to tell if the alien had caused her long-term harm; as a UNIT doctor she had become proficient at understanding the basics of the Doctor's Time Lord biology, but she was unsure what the alien had done.
"No, it's just excited," the Doctor replied, "and trust me when it's excited it lets you know; I'm fighting the urge to dance with joy right now."
The Doctor led Martha away from the ship. "The alien wants us to go this way."
"Why?"
"I don't know. When I communicated with it in my mind, it gave extremely precise longitude and latitude coordinates," the Doctor let out a groan as she looked around. "It certainly knows this place."
Martha saw the alien moving underneath the Doctor's suit; it was more lively than it had been but because she guessed it was home and it knew it, the alien was excited to get out. But then she remembered something. "Hold on, didn't it want you to breathe in some of the air?"
Up ahead she saw the Doctor pausing for a moment. "You're right, it does," she admitted, and she didn't sound happy about it. Slowly the Doctor reached up and took off her face mask, and she breathed in some of the air.
And she instantly began to cough and choke.
Regretting reminding her friend of what the alien wanted, and winning as she listened to the Doctor choking and coughing like mad, Martha rushed forward.
"Doctor, I'm sorry-," she reached down and grabbed her friend's arm. But the Doctor looked at her through squinting eyes up at her, and Martha realised in horror the Doctor couldn't hear her.
But she needn't have worried.
The Doctor coughed a little bit more, but she seemed to be recovering. She signalled to Martha that she was okay through a thumbs-up sign, and she stood up. She rubbed her throat a little bit, but otherwise, she appeared fine. The Time Lady took in a few deep regular breaths and very soon she was back to her usual confident and refined self.
After a moment of gently breathing in and out, the Doctor casually lifted her hand and signalled Martha to follow on. Martha did as she was, well signalled, and she followed on.
The Doctor led her to a cave, taking something off of her belt before throwing it into the air like a football and it suddenly glowed with light. The ball of light defied gravity, and it followed them through the cave until they arrived in a massive cavern that was filled with the web-like alien. The web was everywhere. It was like walking into a massive old castle or house which had been left abandoned and filled with thousands of generations worth of spiders that spun web after web until the walls and ceilings seemed to be supported by them. But here, the webs seemed to stretch on for miles in every direction when she saw how far the cavern extended.
As the Doctor walked towards the web-like mass, the alien underneath her spacesuit wriggled out desperately until it was revealed in its weblike glory. The Doctor knelt down and extended her arms, and the creature slid down and merged with the rest of the weblike mass. As soon as the creature met its fellows, the entire mass seemed to glow before it settled down.
The Doctor stood up slowly and backed off, and she put on her mask. "Oh, I'm glad that's over," she groaned through the radio connection. "My mind feels clearer than its been for a while."
"Are you okay? I mean you were choking…"
"That always happens when you've injected yourself with nanites, Martha. They just needed a few minutes to adapt to the new atmosphere."
Martha absorbed the information and she nodded, guessing it made sense. "I still want to check you over after what you've gone through. I mean it, Doctor," she added sternly when she saw the Doctor's head turn to face her, opening her mouth in automatic protest. "You've just gone through an invasive and painful possession, and I want to make sure there aren't any long-term dangers."
The Doctor opened her mouth but she nodded. "Yes, you're right. Come on Martha, we're finished here today."
Together the two travellers left the web-like mass behind.
Author's Note - There will be more space travel stories soon, but not for some time yet.